


Things You Say and Do

by galacticproportions



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: A bit of plot but not too much, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Injury, Love in a season of death, M/M, Oral Sex, Politics, Storage-room sex, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:42:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7820095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn and Poe are ordered to a planet targeted by the First Order and in the midst of a power struggle of its own, where they try to prepare its fighting forces and also have sex in a storage closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things You Say and Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deputychairman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/gifts).



> This is compatible, though not actively continuous, with the Veterans' Affairs series; you don't need to read that to read this.
> 
> I made this for Deputychairman, mostly because of the mustache, though Finn doesn't like it as much as you do.

Seven straight hours in tactical, the third session like that in as many days, until finally they order him out before he falls down. Finn gets as far as extracting himself from his outer clothes and boots before collapsing on the bed, too tired to stay up and too wired to sleep, and cues up _Tales of the Seven Moons_ on the little holo playback.

 The long-lost brother of the prince is gazing into the conflicted eyes of the palace guard whose duty is to execute him but who, before he was long-lost, saved his life, when Poe comes in, completely fails to heroically suppress an eye-roll at the sound of the theme music, and climbs onto the bed.

 They have a diplomatic arrangement about this--Finn no longer says anything about the sappy Alderaanian folksongs with hundreds of verses, all of which Poe's memorized--and Poe's position right now, between Finn's knees and blocking his line of sight, is a definite violation of the truce. "Move," Finn says. "I'm watching my stories."

 Poe does move, but only to lick out the hollow of Finn's collarbone, drag down his undershirt to bite a nipple, then drag it up to kiss his stomach. "I have good news and bad news," he says. "The good news is that you're fucking incredible and delicious and I wish I could just do this to you all day."

 "And the bad news is, you don't get to," Finn says. "Right?"

 "New orders. The First Order's planning a ground invasion and occupation of Andax--they're nominally neutral, and they're near a key refueling point. You and me are gonna go in and help them get set up to meet the invasion."

 "Fuck," says Finn, with feeling. "Do they know?"

 "Our contacts there know. But that doesn't include their heads of state--it's complicated. I have background you can look over on the way there."

 "Any special cover?"

 "I thought we could be weapons dealers again. It'll give us a reason to have, you know, actual weapons with us--not enough," Poe adds, frowning, "but some. General Organa okayed it and they're working on a nice fake import permit, and we can use our own clothes, we don't need to hit up the costume department," which is what Poe insists on calling the storage pods that hold disguises, ballgowns and uniforms and even a suit or two of stormtrooper armor. "Where you going?"

 "To start obeying orders? By getting dressed?"

 "I'm not quite done here."

 "Poe--"

 "Just a little taste."

 Finn laughs, and soon he's saying Poe's name in a very different tone, loud enough for their engineer neighbor to thump on the wall. His eyes drift down to the dart of Poe's lashes and the perfect tension in his cheeks and he--surrenders, yes, that's the word, to the curl of Poe's tongue. He knows they won't get to do this again for a while--play, feint, laugh together. If they get time alone on the mission, it won't be like this.

 

*

 

Nothing to see here, nothing special, just two mid-level weapons dealers touring the galaxy in the confident expectation that times can always get worse. Poe started growing his mustache en route, and Finn admits it makes him look very different from the old recruitment posters. Something about it makes his eyelids look lazier, his mouth more sardonic. Finn isn't sure how he feels about it; more than once when he catches Poe out of the corner of his eye, leaning into character, there's a moment when his hand goes for his blaster to challenge the stranger on board.

 Their contacts on Andax, which they call Anbau, are members of an underground, vaguely sympathetic to the Resistance and certainly anti-First Order, and also at odds with their own government. They claim there's no hope of getting the government in question behind an armed defense, and Poe maintains that if they use the weapons in the crates as tools of insurrection once the First Order's driven off, that's their business and probably not a bad idea, all things considered.

 To Finn they seem distracted, jumpy, hard to _muster_. His knowledge of stormtrooper ground combat is well received, but his recommendations aren't; their commandant, Attu, is competent but touchy, quick to see a slight. Finn's spent the past few years contributing tactical and strategic suggestions, and nineteen years before that being deferential, but combining the two is new for him. He hadn't realized how much the Resistance had accustomed him to being listened to.

 Poe and a couple of Attu's people do the recruiting, getting half again as many people to join them in a few short weeks. They're still woefully underarmed and despite everything Finn can do, woefully undertrained. Some of the youngest ones seem a little confused about why they're there.

 The first potential day for the invasion dawns and subsides without incident. Finn ought to be relieved--it's another day to train--but he's caught their twitchiness. The weather's raw and rainy and everything's leaky and damp and smells like whatever animal they make into clothes here, and like stale food and a little bit like piss. He and Poe sleep next to each other in the deconsecrated temple that serves as the underground's headquarters, but they've barely seen each other awake in days.

 The hour finally comes when everyone's at least nominally asleep besides the four on watch. Finn's lying in their corner, not even close to sleep, when Poe comes back from making the rounds of the guards to raise morale. He can do this even when he doesn't have any morale of his own to speak of. Finn's seen him do it with his squadrons before an offensive, and with refugees from the broken New Republic worlds. He pulls it from somewhere, the warmth, the interest, the encouragement, the reassurance, and you'd swear it was there all along--more than that, you'd swear it originated not with Poe, but with the person he's talking to.

 Finn doesn't want to be cheered, or comforted.

 The kiss he pulls Poe down into has teeth in it, and muscle, prying Poe's mouth sloppy and open with the pressure of his tongue and a hand on Poe's jaw. The mustache prickles against Finn's upper lip. He gets his other hand on Poe's ass, presses down and grinds up. "Hey," Poe breathes, "this might not--"

 "You don't want it?"

 "I do want it, just this might not be the best spot. There's that side room where we put the crates." The sentences don't leave him all at once, the phrases staggered between kisses and grunts and gasps. "Anything you want, Finn, anything, you know that, right? I just wanna let these people get their sleep."

 The side room is really just an alcove with a door, and there are no crates in it now--broken up for firewood, and the weapons they held laid close to hand. There's room for the two of them to crowd in, for Finn to press Poe against the wall. Their breathing fills the tiny space, and Poe's hands are everywhere, pulling Finn's face down to his neck to bite, skating over his back, gripping him closer, _prying_ at him, then nudging him away to get both of their pants open, then dragging him back in, thigh opening Finn's legs and rubbing against him and softening his knees.

 Finn's dizzy with need and frustration and just plain exhaustion, and when Poe whispers, just audible, "Fuck me here, right here, fuck me against the wall," he almost does collapse, leans hard against Poe, relying on the wall behind him. "I don't think I can," he says, "I didn't bring anything and I--sorry--"

 "Don't _apologize._ Don't worry. Fuck my mouth instead, how about that?"

 "Come for me first," Finn says, barely knowing what he's saying, "come _hard,_ I wanna watch your face, so hard, Poe, do it, I need to _know--"_ Poe's hand on his mouth cuts him off, to silence him, he thinks at first, but then he gets it and licks the palm wet, meets Poe's eyes and sees them shining in the faintest possible light.

 Finn licks his own hand too and Poe thrusts into their stacked fists, head tossing and knocking against the wall, tiny groans making their way past his teeth where they're fixed in his bottom lip, till he gasps, "I'm gonna," and Finn pulls Poe's head down to his shoulder and feels teeth set in his skin instead.

 Then Poe sighs and relaxes his grip, kisses Finn's neck, his jaw, a mis-aimed one alongside his nose. "For you," he says against Finn's mouth, and then he turns them so Finn can have the wall at his back, and sinks down.

 This is where Finn would normally say the things that make it even better, tell Poe _You look good on your knees, you know your mouth looks so good around my dick,_ but they've already made too much noise and he can't see Poe anyway. Can only feel him, slick and warm and _offering_ , throat open to Finn's thrusts and lips gripping tight. Can _hear_ him: without the flow of monologue, the sucking, clicking, slurping sounds, warm and spitty and wet, the occasional vibration of his throat that sends a double thrill through Finn's dick because he knows Poe's loving it too, the scrape of Finn's own breath in his throat in the dark, all of these fill the tiny room almost to bursting. He hears himself moan and gets the heel of his hand in his mouth, bites into the meat of it, and shoves forward like he's been punched at the base of his spine, coming hard and stinging.

 Finn slides down the wall to the floor, where Poe still is, and fumbles toward him in the dark. Poe swallows again and kisses Finn lightly, come still on his lips, and that stupid mustache. The rhythms of their breath move toward each other as they even out.

 "Stay here a sec," Poe says eventually. "Don't get up, I'll be right back." The door opens, letting in a sense of space and air, then closes. When he comes back, Finn can just tell he's holding something, and kneeling down, and then dabbing at Finn's shirt with something. "What are you--"

 "It's just rainwater," Poe says. "I went outside, I thought we could clean up a little. Hold this for me." What he hands Finn is someone's hat, sloshing and about a third full; Poe dips a rag in it again. "I should've started with our faces," he says, "lemme do that now," and Finn feels the touch of cool water again on his cheeks and forehead. Poe wipes his own face, cleans his cock and Finn's, does the best he can with their clothes. "I can't say they'll _dry_ by morning, but they probably won't be any damper than anything else."

 "Whose hat is it?" is all Finn can think of to say.

 "The costume department's. I brought it 'cause I thought it might go with the whole--impression--but I don't think it does, so I packed it away." Poe says this so seriously that Finn has to crush him close.

 

*

 

The First Order transports land on day three. They have some warning from a liaison in the spaceport control tower, enough to get in position, but they're grievously outnumbered and the difference in combat experience tells quickly. The cold rain blinds them; the mud drags at them. Finn fires shot after shot and can't see where they land. The stormtroopers were obviously expecting no resistance at all, and as dark falls they retreat, but the transports remain in position. The Anba retreat too, filthy and streaming, carrying the dead and wounded.

 Finn crouches with Attu and her seconds, Kenbu and Oga, in the darkened temple--they don't want to show a light in case the First Order identifies it as their base and picks it off from the air--trying to figure out where they could hit, what they could do differently. Poe's stance, across the room, is one Finn recognizes: Poe wishes he was in the air. He can't be of use in the way he wants to be.

 The second day seems to be going better, they're used to the mud and they seem to be holding their own, when something arcs through the air to Finn's left. His reflexes take over and he throws himself in the opposite direction, but it wasn't him they were aiming at.

 It turns out that when someone you love is lying in front of you covered in blood, you really do say all the things that people in holonovelas say: "Stay with me," and "You're gonna be okay," and "I love you" and "Hold on." Finn says "Hold on" a bunch of times in between putting pressure on the abdominal wound and firing to keep the invaders at bay. He says it half-carrying, half-dragging Poe into cover, so they can make their way back to the temple without giving away its location. He says it a few times more between signaling for a medic and waiting for their arrival.

 The shrapnel, the medics tell them--tell Finn, mostly, since Poe still can't hear--cut across muscle rather than through. If he's bleeding internally they should know by morning, not that there's much they'll be able to do about it. They give him a pain shot and a handful of pills and move on to the next person; they don't have time to wash the mud and blood off his face. Finn can't find the rag from last night, so he goes outside and wets a corner of his shirt in the downspout.

 He's putting the shirt back on, damp and stained at the hem, when an Anba Finn hasn't met yet, so young they don't have their ears pierced, comes in stiff and trembling and tells them Attu is dead.

 

 *

 

The next day, the Andax government declares its surrender to the First Order, and Kenbu and Oga call to their followers that the time has come to take down the Metal Fortress, drawing ragged cheers. They're going to take the Resistance weapons and point them at the enemy they know best, the one that's already done them the most damage. Finn can understand it, even though he can already see that they'll be caught between two unprincipled enemies. Most of them probably know this too, but they seem renewed, enthused, eager to start.

 He asks Poe, whose hearing has mostly come back in one ear, "How long till you can fly?"

 "Fly for you right now. You think we should get out?"

 "This has turned into something else, we can't do any more for the Resistance here. But Poe, the painkillers?"

"Told the medics to give 'em to Aukas. She needed it more, and if I was gonna drown in my own blood I wanted to know right away." Poe prods around the bandage. "This feels like shit, but in a regular way, not an 'I'm gonna die' way. Not sure I can walk that far, though."

 "You can lean on me. Or I'll take you on my back if I have to."

 "We're leaving these people here to die," Poe says. His hair is matted, and the mustache looks pasted onto his face.

 "Yeah," Finn says, "probably."

 They do the preflight checks at dawn, Poe leaning against the hull and telling Finn what to look for. Once they leave atmo he seems--not exactly better, but he punches their first set of coordinates to lightspeed with the tiniest bit of a flourish. If there are any First Order craft in orbit, they don't sight them and they don't give chase. Finn feels like the breath he's taking is his first in weeks--ship's air never tasted so good--and his battlefield self sinks away with the planet's disc.

 "We have two options here," Poe says when they're well away. "I can take whatever stims are left in the medkit and we can get home fast, or I can set the autopilot and we can cruise for a couple extra days and you can watch the scanners and I can sleep."

 "Fuel?"

 "Same amount for either, just about. Might use up a little more if we're going slower for longer, but not enough to be a problem."

 "Let's cruise," Finn says. "You get horizontal and I'll bring you another blanket and if you need a hand getting to the fresher--"

 "You can hold it for me."

 "You're a sleazebag. I think it's the mustache. It's bad for your character." Finn is lightheaded with exhaustion and relief and the prospect of two extra days, both of them still breathing, and together. He feels this even though he knows that safety in space is an illusion, that they're as vulnerable as anything in the sky. That any safety they have is an illusion, a flicker, a story they tell themselves. He says, "I was trying to be nice."

 "Finn, you got me off that battlefield, you saved my ass _again_. You gave those people more of a chance than they would've had. You can call me anything and everything you want."

 There's a challenge in Poe's eyes, and Finn knows that if their positions were reversed, Poe would say unhesitatingly, "You're everything I want." But it wouldn't be true, either way. Finn wants the kid who brought them the news of Attu's death to live to grow up. He wants every trooper on those transports to be free to do more than choose who to shoot at. He and Poe both want that, it's why--

 But that's not the whole story either. It never is.

 "Poe Dameron," Finn says, stepping over to the side of the pilot's chair and pressing his face into Poe's hair, and Poe sinks toward him, sighing, like that's all he wanted to hear.

 


End file.
